IPA reference · vowel
œ — open-mid front rounded vowel
/ɛ/ with rounded lips — more open than /ø/.
How to make the open-mid front rounded vowel
Say "bed" and round the lips, dropping the jaw a little further.
This sound does not occur in standard English. That means there is no word you can say to find it by accident; you have to build it from the articulatory instruction above and check it against a recording.
Languages that use it
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for œ, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
The close-mid partner; French distributes them by syllable type.
What this means for learners
In French the choice between /ø/ and /œ/ is largely predictable from syllable structure: open syllables take /ø/, closed syllables /œ/.
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of œ attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol œ make?
œ is the open-mid front rounded vowel. /ɛ/ with rounded lips — more open than /ø/. It does not occur in standard English.
How do you pronounce œ?
Say "bed" and round the lips, dropping the jaw a little further.
Which languages have the open-mid front rounded vowel?
Among the languages covered here: French (peur, “fear”); German (können, “to be able”); Turkish (göz, “eye”).
What is the difference between œ and ø?
The close-mid partner; French distributes them by syllable type.